This recall is being conducted as a result of the receipt of two previously disclosed reports outside of the U.S. of failure to activate the device due to a potential defect in a supplier component. The potential defect could make the device difficult to activate in an emergency (failure to activate or increased force needed to activate) and have significant health consequences for a patient experiencing a life-threatening allergic reaction (anaphylaxis).

In order to initiate the recall, Mylan has instructed patients to contact Stericycle in order to receive a voucher for a replacement injector. The company's website provides the following instructions:

Stericycle will ask you questions about your EpiPen 2-Pak® or EpiPen Jr 2-Pak® cartons to confirm if the devices come from one of the recalled lots.

Prior to calling Stericycle, you can confirm if you are in possession of a recalled EpiPen product by checking if the lot number matches any of the lot numbers listed in the table below. If so, you need to contact Stericycle at 877-650-3494. If not, your EpiPen product is not affected by the recall and there is no further action necessary.

If you are in possession of a recalled EpiPen product, Stericycle will initiate the process of providing a container to return the recalled medication.

Stericycle also will collect your contact information and will begin contacting patients back on Monday, April 3, with voucher information to redeem a free replacement product.

Patients should not return any devices affected by the recall until they have received their voucher to redeem their free replacement from their pharmacy. It is important that patients continue to carry their current EpiPen Auto-Injector until they receive a replacement device.

To determine if your EpiPen is affected by this recall or for more information on return and replacement of a recalled EpiPen, visit Mylan's website here.

Kitchology is a social cooking platform enabling people with food allergies, intolerances and special diets to rediscover the world of food by empowering them to customize recipes they will love. It is available on the web at kitchology.com and as an apple app available here.

Kitchology’s sophisticated substitution engine provides personalized ingredient recommendations, making meal planning, shopping, and preparation. The platform starts with top eight allergy conditions and will add more diets over time. We know how helpful the search tool on our website has been to those searching for foods and Kitchology offers the same helpful tool when searching for recipes. When you visit their Recipe page, you are able choose "Foods To Avoid" and when clicked will return those recipes made without those foods.

The Kitchology blog supports the community of people dealing with special diets. It provides recipe tips for ingredient substitutions, reducing sugar, fat, salt, eating vegan, paleo and more. You can read the latest science based information on health, nutrition, food safety along with current food technology trends. Kitchology helps consumers decide better, so they eat better. So head on over to the website and explore!

I caught an episode of Jacques Pépin: More Fast Food My Way where at the end of the episode he demonstrated how to make his well-loved holiday treats. Even in the early, early morning, it looked like an easy treat to be made so I tried it. And it came out great. And the best part of this treat is that it can be made with just about anything. Basically, you melt chocolate, put the item you want to cover into the bowl with the chocolate and then spoon it out to chill in the refrigerator.

I used Enjoy Life Foods Dark Chocolate Morsels and Sunrich Natural Organic Sunflower Kernels. Our biggest worry with sunflower seeds is cross-contact with nuts during processing and the package states on the back nut free. Very rare that we find this.

The first thing I did was melt the chocolate with a glass bowl on top of a boiling pan of water.

Once melted, I put in the sunflower seeds until it seemed like there were more sunflower seeds than chocolate in the bowl.

Then you spoon it out your surface to then chill in the refrigerator. I put mine on parchment paper.

Pop them in the fridge for awhile and then eat when ready. It is super fast to make these, just the time to melt the chocolate and spoon the mixture which was about 10 minutes in total.

Many nights, Enjoy Life Foods chocolate chips are an after dinner dessert treat in our house. Our son loves these and is really one of the few chocolates he can eat being nut free. So it is really exciting to see that Enjoy Life Foods has launched these snack packs that he can travel with when going to birthday parties or other events with treats.

As always, Enjoy Life Foods are free of the Top 8 allergens as well as Sesame, Sulfites and Potato. There are two varieties of the chip snack packs: Dark Chocolate Morsel Snack Packs and Mini Chips Snack Packs. Each bag comes with 12 individuals packs. Enjoy Life is offering a Buy One Get One Free deal from now until 10/21/16 using code SNACKFREELY.

Halloween is right upon us. Here is a list of resources to help you have an allergy friendly Halloween.

FARE: FARE's Teal Pumpkin Project spreads awareness of food allergies at Halloween time while encouraging houses to offer non-food treats for children with food allergies. Teal Pumpkin Project supplies can be found on their website here.

In case you missed the testimony of Mylan's CEO Heather Bresch, you can see a replay via CSPAN.org. One of the items talked about during the testimony is the availability of generic Epipen. Ms. Bresch indicated that it would be the same product as the Epipen (from transcript of video on CSPAN - at about 30:53 on the video):

>> HERE IS WHAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND. WHEN YOU BUY THE GENERIC VERSION, IN THE GENERIC -- WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE IN THE GENERIC VERSION? IS IT JUST THE NAME? >> IT WILL BE -- WE WILL -- IT WILL BE THE SAME PRODUCT WITH EPINEPHRINE AUTO INJECTOR ON IT, [IT WILL BE] SAME PRODUCT. >>

NIAID is seeking public comment on a draft update to the Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Food Allergy in the United States to address the prevention of peanut allergy. Read the draft here and offer your input by Monday, April 18.

Follow Your Heart has a new product on the market: VeganEgg. This product caught our eye because right on the front it says you can scramble it - you’re supposed to be able to use it like a real egg. All of the other egg alternatives that we've used don’t offer this feature. The packaging of the VeganEgg is cute. It’s a quarter egg carton. Inside you find a bag with powder. Intrigued and excited by the fact that our son has never had an omelet, I bought it and tried it.

The directions instruct you to mix two tablespoons of the powder with one half cup of ice cold water and then to whisk briskly for the equivalent of one egg. After doing this, I put a little milk as I always do with my omelets (yes, we are not vegan and yes dairy is one of the few top 8 that our son can have) and poured it into the pan. One thing I did note was that there was an sulfur-like egg smell after whisking it.

I let it sit in the pan and cook for awhile. Once it seemed firm, I added some cheese and chives and let it sit some more and then did the half flip for the omelet. And the omelet was done.

Our son liked it. I tasted it. I can eat eggs so to me it was egg like texture but not quite an egg taste. You can see from the picture above that while it was cooking, it raised off of the pan. It does get a fluff once its heated which makes me hopeful for making pao de quiejo, which is an egg intensive bread and with the egg replacer it becomes a little rock once it cools down. Hopefully, we can get a better result using the VeganEgg (follow up post will come soon with results). I have used it in calzones using the Namaste Pizza mix and our son said it was “boss”. He said the crust was really good. I tried it and it did have that “fluff” to it. So if you can find it, it’s worth a try with your recipes.